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| ICT and Urban Innovation Output: An Analysis of Innovation Growth, Quality Differentiation and Spatial Spillover Distance |
| Jiang Renai,Wang Longguo,Yang Shenghao,Li Dongmei |
| (School of Economics and Finance, Xi 'an Jiaotong University,Xi'an 710061,China) |
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Abstract Information communication technology (ICT) has become an effective carrier for information dissemination and knowledge spillover. As two representative products of ICT, the transformation of information transmission and communication methods by the Internet and mobile phones can further deepen the innovative connection between cities, thereby directly or indirectly affecting urban innovation activities. Meanwhile, the network externalities of the Internet and mobile phones bring innovation activities certain spatial spillover characteristics. Because of the increasingly complex regional linkages, the factor of distance plays an important role in innovation spillovers. However, most of the existing research on the innovation effect of ICT is limited to the quantitative perspective, ignoring the importance of innovation quality. Especially with the explosive growth of Chinese patents, there are a lot of innovation bubbles, and the pursuit of quantitative growth is not enough to support the realization of self-reliance and self-improvement in science and technology. In this regard, does ICT have an impact on innovation quality? If the externality characteristics of ICT are taken as a general-purpose technology, does it have spatial spillover effects on urban innovation?#br#Using the panel data of 284 prefecture-level cities in China from 2004 to 2019, this paper respectively constructs four spatial weight matrices and employs the spatial Durbin model to examine the impact and spillover effects of ICT on urban innovation. It then measures urban innovation quantity and quality by the number of granted patents and citations. Although patent citations are taken as a commonly used indicator of innovation quality in the world, the China National Intellectual Property Administration (CNIPA) does not have relevant statistics, which brings difficulties to the evaluation of patent quality in China. Therefore, this paper uses Python to sort out all granted patents in the sample interval, and calculates the average cited index of each city based on the citation relationship and the addresses of the patentees to effectively measure urban innovation quality. On this basis, it further takes the tail innovation index and zero cited index to measure high-quality patents and low-quality patents respectively to investigate the innovation differentiation effect of ICT, and uses the cited lag time and the proportion of cooperative patents for mechanism analysis.#br#The study shows that, first, ICT, represented by the Internet and mobile phones, has promoted the growth of urban innovation and produced significant spatial spillover effects. Compared with mobile phones, the Internet has a stronger effect on improving the quantity of innovation; mobile phones can also improve the quality of urban innovation, while the Internet can cause the average quality to decline. Second, the spillover boundary of mobile phones for innovation is 1000km, and the optimal overflow range is roughly 100-1 000km; while the Internet reaches 2000km and 1 000-2000km. Third, the decline in innovation quality caused by the Internet is because it promotes urban high-quality innovation, and also leads to a large number of patent bubbles, and the impact is greater than the mitigation effect of mobile phones on patent bubbles. It shows that ICT generally produces an innovation differentiation effect.Fourth, the mechanism analysis further verifies this effect. On the one hand, the Internet shortens the time to search for information, which facilitates innovative imitation and intensifies the patent bubble; on the other hand, the implicit knowledge transmission of the Internet and mobile phones is also conducive to the formation of innovative cooperation, thereby promoting high-quality innovation. Lastly there is heterogeneity in the impact of ICT, and it is generally more obvious in the middle and western regions and non-provincial capital cities.#br# By taking innovation quality into consideration through the construction of urban patent indicators, this paper makes up for the lack of research on ICT and innovation quality. Then it elaborates on the internal mechanisms that lead to the decline and differentiation of innovation quality and provides theoretical support for the realization of high-quality urban innovation. Finally, it comprehensively examines the direct impact of ICT on innovation output and the spillover effects of different forms. The conclusions constitute a useful supplement to the existing literature, and provide a reference for the realization of China's self-reliance and self-improvement in science and technology.#br#
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Received: 25 July 2022
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